Pharmaceutical medications increase the lives and the quality of lives of millions of people. Moreover, as the general population ages and new beneficial drugs are introduced, prescription order volumes to be filled at pharmacies and distributed to individual customers and through health care providers such as hospitals, convalescent centers, and the like, are expected to double within the next few years. This present and expected increase in order volume places enormous pressure on pharmacists, other pharmacy workers, and health care providers, who strive to fill and distribute each order efficiently, accurately and quickly.
The process of retrieving, filling, and distributing a prescription order to a patient or customer can include many different people and organizations performing numerous tasks. An error with any one of these tasks can lead to the mishandling of a patient's prescription order. Such mishandling of a prescription order often results in a patient not timely receiving their prescription order or receiving a wrong, possibly even deadly, prescription order or the like.
Timely and efficient filling of prescriptions is maximized when a pharmacy worker can easily locate and retrieve supplies used for filling individual prescriptions. Unfortunately, these supplies are often misplaced within the pharmacy, or not replenished in a timely manner, thereby hindering the timely filling of prescription orders for customers and patients.